FAULT TREE ANALYSIS

Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a top-down, deductive

analytical method. In FTA,
initiating primary events such as component failures,
human errors, and external
events are traced through Boolean logic gates to an
undesired top event such as
boiler explosion or tower crane collapse. The intent is to
identify ways to make top
events less probable, and verify that safety goals have
been achieved.
FTA may be qualitative or quantitative. When failure and
event probabilities are
unknown, qualitative fault trees may be analyzed for
minimal cut sets. For
example, if any minimal cut set contains a single base
event, then the top event
may be caused by a single failure.
Some use both fault trees and event trees. An event tree
starts from an undesired
initiator (loss of critical supply, component failure etc.) and
follows possible further
system events through to a series of final consequences.
As each new event is
considered, a new node on the tree is added with a split of
probabilities of taking
either branch. The probabilities of a range of "top events"
arising from the initial
event can then be seen.